The Cardinal Points
by Novalia1001
Summary: An analysis of the world of Soul Eater after the Kishin's defeat in prose form as seen from Maka's eyes.
1. International Shibusen

_Chapter One: International Shibusen_

In the oppressive damp of the Amazon jungle, a skittish kishin egg with the appearance of a Mayan god flittered through the tangled bush. It was during the height of the day where humidity reached its peak and many parts of the jungle were flooded, yet so long as the kishin egg remained under the foliage everywhere was dark: the thick canopy didn't allow for much sunlight to penetrate.

Despite the darkness being apt, it was too familiar to her. It reminded her of the room inside Soul's heart, the throes of madness, the nights spent purging evil. She handled her father on her shoulder and darted from tree to tree, ricocheting herself along. The groves were thinning, they were still closely following, and the Albarns were taken off guard for a moment. But despite that there was three foot deep water underfoot there were logs and natural refuse that performed as stepping stones. The pursuit continued without incident.

When at last they came to the clearing, the plaza was as cleared and desolate as the pictures during briefing had illustrated. The ruins of Copán met them and the dark throbbing heavily decorated form of the squirrel-like kishin egg was panting heavily on a carved stele. Maka wasn't even breathing hard as she approached the tiny creature. It was panicking to get away from her but at the same time was trapped.

"Did the bait work?" Spirit asked warily.

No sooner had he spoken did a massive shadow fall over them. Maka turned and blocked. She gritted her teeth against the massive force of the gargantuan kishin egg. Built as a stylized version of a jaguar it sported similar shapes across its body like its smaller counterpart with gleaming angry once-human eyes. It was ten times Maka's size.

With its second strike Maka danced out of the way in a strategic spin. She doubled back, and landed a series of critical hits amidst effective blocks.

It staggered back and in the moments of its retreat Maka lunged forward on her feet, her father's cool metal in her hands. An opening presented herself and she thrust all of her energy into a final strike!

The kishin egg was split between its eyes, through its chest: it's long thrashing tail ended up being sliced to pieces. It warped and imploded. Maka casually got to her feet and her father's human form materialized. He said, "So this was the soul that Stein was looking for?"

"Mm-hmm," Maka replied, "he said that the reports betrayed irregular pre-kishin behavior. He wanted to study it."

"What are we going to do about _him_?"

Maka glanced at the stele where the "baby" kishin-egg was loitering, and worrying. She walked away from it. "We'll come back for it when it becomes formidable," she said.

Spirit thought, _Isn't that reckless?_ He pocketed the soul and he and his daughter left the clearing of the ancient Maya sight leaving little evidence of the skirmish that had occurred there.

Maka Albarn was sixteen years of age when she was designated an agent of Shibusen. Since then she'd become Kid's aid and Stein's apprentice in pre-kishin study. The nature of her job often sent her to distant countries. Very often she was a delegate for Shibusen, very often she was found in the depths of foreign libraries. She was known in Rwanda for her interrogation techniques.

She was almost as famous as Soul "Eater" Evans for his title of being the Last Death Scythe, or as Black Star the _bushin_ , or as Kidd the young god, or Kim the mediator between the worlds of humans and witches…the entire Spartoi had become the face of future advancement. It was a glorious burden that the team had settled on their shoulders.

"Albarn-sensei, you don't really stand out much," one of her students said suddenly.

Maka looked around. She was aware of Jacob being nearby—his eager soul never caught her off guard. She regarded her student, a laid-back boy three years her junior and a weapon who wanted to be a meister. He'd travelled from south Florida to reside in Death City.

As the memories of her recent conversation with Stein faded out of her mind she narrowed her eyes at him critically. "Jacob-kun, aren't you late for my class?"

"Aren't _you_ late for class, Albarn-sensei?" he returned. "You daydream a lot you know. Someone might just sneak up on you."

She turned away from him. "That'll be the day."

"Albarn-sensei!" she turned mid-stride and fell in line with a sudden drop-kick. Timelessly she slipped to the side, in a sense hardly moving, staring into the countenance of a cocky brat who had the gall enough to look surprised.

Maka said coolly, "Jacob-kun, consider this a warning. You've failed my class."

He flushed. "How is _that_ a warning!?"

She had taken down the hallway again ignoring his complaints. _He's almost comparable to Black Star_ , she thought incredulously. Ahead she saw a similar silhouette. He was dressed in jeans, a black jacket, leaned his weight into his right leg and tucked his hands into his pockets. Though she approached his back, the shock white hair, if not his wavelength, was characteristic enough.

"Soul!" she hurried her steps to him. "And Kidd! You've both returned from Cambodia!"

"Sup, Maka?"

"Hello Maka," Kidd said, "I received your report about the kishin eggs in Honduras. Whatever happened to the 'younger' version?"

"Is it good to talk about that here?" Soul slipped in quietly.

Maka became aware of Jacob loitering nearby. She groaned, "I forgot that I had a class to lecture."

"Can I borrow some of your time after your lecture? I'd like to compare notes."

She replied, "Of course."

Kidd smiled cordially and began to move off. "Until then."

Soul casually knocked his knuckles against her free hand as he passed. "Later."

She smiled as they walked away and couldn't help but feel remotely lonely. While respecting everyone's duties, there were moments when she missed the diurnal banter among them before they had to take future into their hands. Black Star and Tsubaki were in South Africa, Kim and Ox and Jacqueline and Havar in the realm of the witches: everyone was scattered and working making the world a better place.

She sighed, collected herself and shouted, "Jacob! Get to class! _Now!"_

There were two people who had asked to be Maka's weapon since she'd made Soul into a Death Scythe. One came shortly after Death the Kidd's coronation from a _kouhai_ who could turn into a halberd. He had come from Tibet, a place strangely contrasting the nature of his weapon, and upon witnessing Maka sparring one day had come to admire her decisiveness and lightweight technique. Though Maka had refused at the time because she was still partnered to Soul, Soul was soon assigned a new position and the young Tibetan boy had found a partner in that time frame.

The second person interested in being Maka's weapon was Jacob.

Jacob was a lanky character, half-Hispanic and wore his black curly hair long and loose. He wore a silver cross around his neck and paid Kidd the greatest respect. There were times when he was caught swearing in Spanish, and he was always proving himself to be an effective weapons' technician. Yet despite this he had formed an attachment to Maka, for a reason she could only assume was the result of juvenile horseplay and a curiosity in her that reminded her of girls' curiosity in Soul.

Jacob's African ancestry allowed him to transform into an axe of ancient design from Zimbabwe's Shona people. Maka personally found his form to be of elegant construction, but had never wielded him despite his asking. She'd never found the reason to: her father was an excellent weapon whenever she went on missions, and she was otherwise studying with Stein.

And so came the end of the day's lessons and it felt like a dream. Maka recognized three students in her class who were young witches. It was slow, but the world of mysticism and its ruling ladies was slowly overlapping with its less magical counterpart. As she was dreaming this, Jacob showed up at her desk.

"Jacob-kun, I'm sure there are other teachers that would deeply enjoy your narcissistic leanings, but can you spare me just for today?"

He seemed sober. She sensed no mischief from him. Though it didn't reflect in her pose, she came to attention and watched him a bit more carefully.

"Please be my meister, Albarn- sensei," he said. "I'll never develop as quickly unless it's you."

"Is it really okay to be asking such a thing from your teacher? It's quite the unconventional relationship. Some might even say forbidden."

"It's not like I'd be aiming for you like _that_ , sensei," he answered brazenly. "I have good taste in women."

Her resulting _Maka Chop_ was not a light one.

It was hours later that Maka was in the infirmary. Her hunger got the best of her. Her lethargy put her to sleep on her feet. Nygus was working around her in the early evening and said, "Outside of some first year students, you're my most frequent patient, Maka-chan."

Maka was half asleep in the pillow. "I respect you, Nygus-sensei. I can't take these kids."

"You say kids like you yourself weren't in the classroom yesterday."

"It doesn't feel like yesterday. After going to the moon and enjoying papa's company, it doesn't feel like yesterday."

Nygus was removing sheets from the bed beside Maka's. "When was the last time you ate a full meal, Maka?"

"Foo'tah ahgoo."

"I can't hear you, you're talking into the pillow."

"I don't remember."

"It doesn't take much to tell that you're overworked," Nygus said. "Add that to lack of sleep and lack of nutrition and it's a wonder why you haven't collapsed yet." To herself Nygus thought, _Maka is truly just a senior student at DWMA. She still has her own classes to attend as well as filling in for Stein and going on missions_.

"Speaking of which: Maka, why don't you have an assigned weapon?"

Maka lifted her head up from the pillow and braced on her elbows. She was lying on her stomach and her feet were hanging off the edge of the bed. She echoed: "Assigned weapon?"

"Yes. Since Soul's been dispatched to other duties you haven't received a new one, right?"

She hummed in agreement. "I've received an offer…"

"Have you? Then why don't you take it?"

"He's a student."

" _You're_ a student," Nygus deadpanned.

"He's an arrogant student. And he's in the class that I temp on behalf of Stein-sensei."

Nygus tenderly asked, "You believe that it would be awkward to be teaching your partner?"

"No, that's not it." Maka rested her hand into her fist. _To be honest I'm not sure if I want another partner. Fighting with papa is different, we don't need to resonate. Of course it's not like I can use papa forever…_

"You should give it a go, Maka," Nygus encouraged. "It's not every day that opportunity will arrive on your doorstep."

Albarn fell down on the pillow. It made sense to get a new partner. It was actually stranger that she hadn't been actively pursuing one. Using her father, a death scythe, had seemed so convenient rather than training from scratch with a new weapon…no, it wasn't even that so much as she was content with things as they were. It suddenly shamed her that she wasn't actively pursuing to better herself, even if in incremental ways. And no differently from what Jacob had said, Maka wasn't as flashy as the rest of the group: Maka was reclusive, hard to find and otherwise too busy to approach.

"And you should sleep at home for once. Since you've been working with Stein it's been easier to sleep at school, right?"

"It's more convenient," she agreed. "And the showers are open all the time so…"

Nygus patted Maka's head tenderly. "When was the last time you were home?"

Maka made her way to the apartment she used to share with Soul. It was roomy now. He didn't sleep there anymore than she did. Usually on separate schedules they'd convene on the apartment for a fresh change of clothes and scavenging hunt for snacks before heading out with scarcely an hour to pass. Blair had semi-moved out: they would spy her around Death City and from time to time they'd glimpse a black cat sleeping on the kitchen window sill.

"I'm home," she called into the empty apartment. It was dusty and dark and cold. There wasn't a hint of human life having lived here. Its forms, its couch, its tables, its kitchen all reminded Maka of her apartment like a cold and distant dream. She looked around with eyes that didn't see and went to sit on the couch. When she opened her eyes again the apartment was filled with the vitality of the morning.

It was in that morning that she decided once and for all that Jacob was to be her new partner.

 _Author's Note_ : Contextually, I preferred the ending of the anime. Despite the fact that the ending of the manga was more epic, more fascinating, and more narrative, to me it made a lot more sense that "courage", Maka's leitmotif, defeated the manifestation of madness and fear. I enjoyed the final conversation between Maka and the kishin when she said: "Everyone has courage," to which the kishin replied, before dying, "In that case, it's just the same as madness."

I also feel that this conversation had given Maka more power. She recognizes that she is the weakest of the team, but in punching the kishin with courage despite that she's the weakest, despite that she's afraid that she'll die, I feel that sort of made her a symbol of a virtue of humanity.

At the same time, the kishin's a god (or a sliver of, specifically). He cannot be gotten rid of so long as insanity exists…

More than likely mine is a simplistic and feminist argument. Perhaps I'm missing a greater concept in the struggle that the gang went through towards the end in the manga or I'm a simple soul swayed by binaries. But I'd love to hear readers' ideas and responses. And if there are any ideas about questions left unanswered about _Soul Eater_ , I'm interested in hearing them too!

Thank you.


	2. Quiet Riots

_Chapter Two: Quiet Riots_

Soul was more surprised than Spirit was when he witnessed Jacob trailing Maka down the hallway as told the rumor. He blinked and stared after them for a while. He heard Liz mention, "So Maka's got a new partner, huh?"

"Yeah," Soul answered. It felt unceremonious somehow. The contract between himself and Maka had ended but they had interacted nonchalantly as though it had not. There was no sense in behaving like strangers besides: the way Kidd was going they could be paired up again in the near future like the good old times.

Where Spirit wept Soul wrestled quietly with feeling uncomfortable.

Liz noticed his hesitance, "How do you feel about it, Soul?"

"Huh? Whatever: I mean Maka's been doin' a lot of missions lately, right? She'll need a consistent partner."

 _That's not what I meant, really,_ Liz thought. "At any rate she's going to have to train him until he comes up to her level."

Soul didn't say anything more of the topic after that. He began talking about what he and a compact Shibusen team had witnessed in Russia.

Where a majority of witches were dissuaded at joining the mortal realm there were factions popping up all over the world passionate about proving that witches and humans couldn't live together. There was one instance of a witch teaming up with an infamous anti-Shibusen group in Baghdad, further complicating international relations. Soul had gone to Russia to talk on a panel about recent events. Among many of the questions one was the long awaited: "What does it feel like to be the last Death Scythe?"

He had replied, "It feels like I'm an emblem for positive relations between the human and witch races. When Shinigami- sama bestowed on me the title of Last Death Scythe it wasn't a declaration of power or rubbing the irony of humanity's weapons in witches' faces. It was recognition of a long standing war in which both parties were held accountable and a promise that witches wouldn't be hunted so long as Shibusen can help it."

"So in other words, you're an icon of peace?"

Soul smirked, "Ironically I'm also a kick-ass weapon. There's no running from that."

Maka was impressed. Jacob knew how to move around a partner. His sleek axe form she found neat to use and easy to handle, slender in aesthetic design and pleasantly weighty. As a scythe technician she missed the long slender staff and accommodating had been her biggest hurdle.

She practiced with Jacob now in the span of time she would have been using reading. She learned that her range had become far shorter but her reaction had changed. Without a long pole there was a door opened to different maneuvers.

"Ha! Hua!" she breathed out with each stroke and thrust. She lunged forward and performed a flurry of attacks. She twisted on her pivotal foot and kicked up and out at the throat of an invisible foe. She was quick on her feet and was throwing in punches as much as she was sweeping around smooth precise arcs. "Ha! Huah! Huh!"

"Getting tired?" Maka asked suddenly between breaths.

Jacob rasped, "You can tell?"

"Have you forgotten who you're taking to?" she smirked.

Jacob maladroitly fell into his human form.

Maka said, "Your break is short. We still haven't resonated our souls completely."

"You expect to do that in one day?" Something in his tone was stressed and incredulous, panicked even to his own ears.

Maka's response was cool in contrast. "It's not impossible, it just take a bit of opening up."

Jacob was lying on the wooden ground. He looked at Albarn when she was moving towards the vending machine. She was a slender elegant young woman, focused and brilliant; notorious for her strength and courage and rare abilities and Giriko soul. Had the rearing of witches' souls been sanctioned he would have been her Death Scythe in five months or less.

"We should go into the field," Maka said suddenly.

Maka wasn't powerful but she was lithe. His body was aching but he could feel himself improving as the hours passed. How many kishin eggs had they gotten since the night began? New York was unsurprisingly a corrupt city. Its urban scene became their playground.

For the fourth time that night Jacob returned to human form. He felt stiff and rotated his joints. Beside him Maka regarded the city. The sweat had dried from her skin with all the jumping the pair had been doing, but within their resonance he could sense her tiredness as diminutive as it was to his own.

Jacob said, "Maka, why did you go so long without a partner?"

She turned to him but her expression was distracted. "Hm?"

He took the opportunity to rephrase: "Rather, what made you finally accept me as your partner?"

She looked past him, his interested face beneath his hoodie, how he was leaning back against the wall to hide his trembling knees. Her vision snapped back to the city. They were on a rooftop. She eventually answered, "Papa's not going to be around forever."

"Crow-cro'-crow."

Maka stiffened and stared at some unseen thing suddenly. A terrible premonition coursed through her like thousands of tiny spasms. They made her blood go cold, the muscles in her shoulders tense, and her stomach though empty felt sick. _This unmistakable reaction is…?_

"Maka?" Jacob asked warily. He walked to her.

"Crow-cro'-crow!"

"Transform!" Maka shrieked. A blast scoured from the face of the earth the roof where Maka and Jacob had been scarcely an instant ago. Attacks zoomed at her, writhing and fluttering like a life of their own. At her prompt Jacob danced over her twirling fingers and the beams of energy bounced off of his blade. Maka kicked off of a wall and swung onto a ladder in a random back alley.

"Shouldn't we get out of here?" Jacob asked restlessly. "That was a witch, right?"

"If it was a witch," Maka said, staring through the dust that had yet to clear, "then she's violating the treaty. We need to identify her at the very least. How are you holding up?"

"I'm fine."

She appreciated the tone in his voice. He was aching, but he was standing by her with great resolve. She smirked and cried, "Right, then let's go!"

Soul remembered overhearing first year students praise Maka when she was out of earshot. They were mostly hushed female voices: "Isn't Albarn-sempai so cool? She's so elegant and collected."

"She's a woman though. It's such a waste."

Soul had scoffed.

"Weapons must be lining up to be her partner," the first female said after pausing. She'd probably heard Soul and dismissed it as nothing. She continued, "I mean she's partly responsible for the Last Death Scythe's final form, you know? And with a Gorgon's soul no less."

Their voices were disappearing like they were walking away and Soul remembered Maka whining that no-one wanted to be her partner. Though he had joked at the time that it was due to her lack in sex appeal, it was probably more due to her personality. Maka was violent. She was tough to get along with. Maka fought against her partners as much as she fought against mutual opponents. She was hard-working and quick thinking: she could be reckless. One had to be patient and forgiving with Maka.

Aside from her incendiary nature pursuing weapons were probably in low supply because he, Soul, was around. There were many who assumed that Maka Albarn accompanied the Last Death Scythe Soul "Eater" Evans on his infamous missions despite that he and his former partner now performed their lives on two totally different schedules.

These thoughts were in his head because Kidd had mentioned it in passing that Maka needed a consistent partner. While she was performing her duties splendidly with her father, Death the Kidd needed Spirit at his side. "He's a part of the old 'government', if you will," Kidd had explained lightly in Soul's, Patricia's and Elizabeth's presences one evening. "While I am striving to change things for the better for Shibusen and the wider world, I still need the older generations to guide me on my way there."

It was like talking to the ruler of the world.

"Soul," Kidd had said, "you've been Maka's partner. I want you to choose the best weapon for her from this list."

And Soul was handed a folder bursting at the seams with profiles. Soul blurted, " _What?_ I'm supposed to go through all this? Just let Maka pick her own damned weapon!" This was before Jacob had been apprehended by said meister.

"I want to narrow down the recommendation," Kidd replied coolly. "Just pick the top five, alright? I'm counting on you."

Shortly after that, though Shinigami- sama had been notified that Maka was training with an axe named Jacob, Kidd hadn't changed Soul's mission. He insisted that Maka be equipped with the best than start from the ground up. Soul almost found himself saying that he could be Maka's partner again if Kidd was that concerned, but as a weapon of god he could not say such words so easily.

His position was not the same as being the weapon of a mortal. It was a role slowly being learned.

And so Soul went home and shifted files around and began to read in the dead of night. It was while he was doing this mission that the door uncharacteristically opened. Scared beyond his wits, Soul's rapid reaction had him slam himself into the wall back first and stare at the door where a thin girl appeared.

"Soul?"

"Maka?" he asked incredulously, "What are you doing here?"

She opened the door further and half-stepped inside. "I just returned from New York. Nygus ran me out of DWMA. She says I shouldn't sleep there anymore."

 _That explains so much_ , Soul thought to himself. "Why were you in New York?"

"A routine mission," she replied vaguely. She noticed the files on his desk. "What are those?"

 _The means of my replacement_ , he thought. "A sort of man-hunt on behalf of Kidd."

"Oh."

He noticed for the first time that she was still dressed in her battle uniform. "You came in recently?"

"An hour ago. I was writing a report. Jacob and I were attacked in New York by a witch."

"She got away?"

"Yes. Her description matches those of a witch in a group who stirred up trouble in Austria three weeks ago. I think she may be targeting Shibusen directly." She sighed. "I'm beat. I could use a good book right now."

He looked at the profiles. He'd narrowed it down to twenty but…"Hey Maka."

"Yes?"

"If you had to pick a weapon again for your partner, what type would it be?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?"

He looked at her quizzically.

"A scythe."

 _Author's Note:_ Soul's last name and his brother's first take from the names of famous western jazz musicians, Bill Evans and Wes Montgomery respectively. I had once thought of writing a fan-fiction in which Soul's family would appear named Bill and Montgomery (or perhaps Bill Montgomery) and it was with this in mind that had finished reading the manga in hopes of finding ideas about his background. But I instead got more usable information from a random Wiki that spoke to an unnamed grandmother.

I personally really dislike original characters however. Too often authors tend to use OC's to disrupt the natural pattern of the main protagonists' personalities. Personality retention is to me one of the most important details in writing fan-fiction, lest of course it's a parody. Of course in alternate universes personalities will change because the context in which they were reared is entirely different. However there are core things to each character that should never change, I think: its makes them recognizable.

Also note that I switch between DWMA and Shibusen. I understand the former to relate to the academy and the latter to speak about the organization of which the academy is a part, though in the anime they're referred to the same thing.

I received a review describing Crona's appearance. I'll keep this in mind: I hadn't considered Crona's story as well.


	3. Blitz or To The Death (Scythe) Match

_Chapter Three: "Blitz" or To the Death "Scythe" Match_

Death the Kidd remembered clearly when Black Star burst into his chambers. Before he could get a word in edgewise the ninja shouted too loudly: "Stein and Maka are having a Death Scythe match!"

Lord Death frowned. "Hah?"

It came to pass that Black Star was more accurate than Kidd preferred to admit. Somehow classes were ended for the day. All of Shibusen crowded the arena that was usually used for the annual sparring festivals. Screams were coming from students rooting for their favourite meister or weapon.

"Stein- _hakase_ is actually popular," Death thought offhandedly.

Stein was standing coolly on one side of the ring talking lowly to Spirit. Maka was warming up with Soul acclimating herself with his weight and their combined technique. She manipulated him flawlessly. It stirred memories in Spartoi. "Are you ready, Stein- _hakase_?"

Stein got rid of the cigarette he was smoking and sunk into the proper posture. "Sparring with my students," he said with a grin.

"They grow up so fast," Spirit added nostalgically.

"I know that's your daughter over their Spirit. I should warn you I don't intend on going easy on her."

Spirit said casually and with affection, "That's an Albarn over there. She can take you."

Stein ran to Maka. When Maka used to use her father in combat she made full use of the fact that he was heavy to land critical hits. His design was also great for quick defense due to a blade that can disappear and multiply in number. Soul on the other hand was lighter and his blade curved more. It made arching motions more sensible. In those motions Maka and Soul used the blade as a counterweight.

She spun out of the way now, Soul dancing over her wrists and gloved knuckles. _Clang!—Clang!—Clang_ went the weapons when they hit. Returning from the defensive, Maka swung the scythe in an obvious move that Stein easily leapt over. He resonated with Spirit in that moment. He swung _Witch Hunter_ down at the pair.

Stein smirked. "You're worthy of praise."

As the dust cleared a roar sounded off. Students and spectators were going wild within the stands. Kidd eventually saw why. Maka had blocked Witch Hunter with her Witch Hunter. Such a speedy resonance!

Black Star quipped, "What's the big deal? I could stop either one of those attacks with my bare hands!"

 _While that may be true_ , Shinigami thought, _what's amazing is how quickly both Stein and Maka resonated with their partners_. He watched their souls interact wonderingly. Logically speaking, Maka and Soul shouldn't have been able to get along. Their personalities were so discordant. Their strong friendship easily bridged that gorge.

"By the way, Tsubaki," Death asked of the young woman beside him, "how did this get started?"

Tsubaki placed a hand to her mouth in thought. "When Black Star and I returned, Stein and Maka were apparently having a heated debate about her prospective partner."

 _Is it about Jacob?_ Death wondered, well informed. Yet why was she using Soul now? Was it because she was a better scythe technician than an axe user?

Tsubaki continued, "Stein said that before she should use other weapons she should at least be able to master her primary, the scythe."

"Ah," Kidd said, now understanding. "And I suppose this spar is meant to justify Maka as a master technician."

"That's what I understood as well."

Black Star was shouting retorts and taunts and laughing gaily.

 _At any rate it's a rare sight to see one scythe technician against another. It's beautiful to watch_.

Soul spun around Maka's neck to avoid colliding with Spirit. They'd returned to basic blades. They attacked and Spirit and Stein, with their malleable defense, blocked. Soul and Maka held their ground, their souls resonating and flaring at full power. Metal gritted against metal.

Stein said, "Your technique is well knit. It leaves very little space open for attack and how you both use your respective agilities is commendable. However…"

 _Soul Palm!_

"…there's only so much that that can do."

Maka avoided it in messy retreat. She could feel Soul's reprimand.

"So you dodged, hm? Very good." He got into battle ready position again. "Get past my defense!"

She bolted forward. Stein swung—Maka fell and skidded on the ground beneath the attack. The staff of Soul in scythe form was caught in her ankles and, while spinning on her hands and still remaining low to the ground, the black and red scythe spun about Maka's kinetic legs to attack the pair from below. He struck Spirit into the ground to grind the motion to the halt but despite Soul's sudden stop Maka was still spinning and she landed a barrage of kicks on her teacher.

All of this happened in a matter of seconds.

The crowd was great and noisy.

The attack wasn't enough to force Stein back he landed a drop kick on her which she guarded against with her arms. Quickly, quickly, she palmed Soul and jumped back. Her forearms ached. Soul asked, "Maka, are you alright?"

"A little shaky," she admitted. "Stein- _hakase_ and papa are tough, aren't they?"

"Damn old bastards," Soul agreed with a smirk.

 _Demon Hunter!_

Peals of ecstatic screams went into the air. Soul's name was among them.

Soul and Maka maintained the massive energy as though it were a casual technique. They rushed, unrelenting, attacked quickly and aggressively. Stein made to use his incredible soul wavelength again. Maka registered it. "Soul, now!"

Unheard frequencies left the blade amplified by their resonance. Stein, caught off guard, flinched despite himself. He was not unaware of Soul's ability to transmit waves through Maka—be they sound waves or soul waves—nor of his ability to transfer them to other souls with a web-like ability that they earned from Arachne. But he hadn't predicted that he could make surrounding wavelengths fall into total disarray.

The spectators felt it. Their souls quivered reacted, changed even if incrementally and for a moment they were not themselves. It even touched Kidd and his giant Soul. Black Star seemed to notice it, but so far as Kidd could tell he rejected the assaulting frequency.

On the battle platform Stein grew discordant from Spirit despite himself and his ability to change his frequency to others. The Death Scythe was suddenly _too hard_ to hold onto and he had to release him. Maka and Soul still didn't relent! They rushed Stein again taking advantage of his momentary stumble.

Stein bobbed and weaved, all too aware that they were forcing space between himself and Spirit-sempai. He smirked, "Well done."

And suddenly he was in front of Maka and tore Soul from her hands. She was surprised but had the awareness enough to backflip from his subsequent attacks. Spirit was suddenly in his hands again. Maka thought with a tsk, "I knew that it wouldn't last long, but I at least hoped it would have bought Soul and I some more time!"

Stein said, "Good tactics. You caught me off guard."

"For all the good it did," Maka answered sourly. Her smirk was sarcastic. Just as her father as a Death Scythe came towards her Soul flashed in front of her. She caught him mid-air and swung…!

 _Clang!_

The crowd that regained its senses looked on intently.

"They're far from equally matched," Kidd thought, "but Stein is taking them seriously. He recognizes Maka as an adept scythe technician if not a master."

"How long is this fight gonna last?" Liz asked.

Patty had joined Black Star in screaming.

Space had come between the two fighters and now they were circling one another.

"Didn't I say that my daughter could take you?"

"She and Soul are holding on extremely well," Stein remarked. "I've finished."

Spirit panicked: "You've been analyzing them this whole time?!"

Maka dashed forward where Stein was waiting. Spirit's blade disappeared and Soul's blade was deflected along the staff and Maka's throat was caught in the cross bars of Spirit's scythe and she fell, pinned beneath metal and Stein's weight. There was pressure on her throat and little space to move.

"Maka!" Soul began to glow.

"Turn into human form you lose the match," Stein said in tonic sing-song.

"Like I care about that!" He grabbed Stein's shoulder.

Maka wasn't really choking, she was panicking. Soul realized that when Stein got up and he rushed to her side. Her throat was bruised and she kept coughing.

"That was a bit rough, Stein," her father complained.

The doctor replied, "I had little other choice. Maka's too strong to handle delicately."

She and Soul were on their feet. She was touching her neck gingerly. Soul was holding her elbow.

"Your verdict, doctor?" she managed.

Stein began to walk off. "You aren't a master yet. Don't be in too much of a rush, Maka. Development takes time too."

That was when they were aware of Shibusen's pleased applause.

 _Author's Note_ : A student had mentioned that it's a waste for Maka to be a woman. For those unfamiliar with the phrasing, it means that, in this student's opinion, Maka would be more popular and appealing as a guy. When Maka was a male in the book of Eibon (manga-junkies might be familiar) the entire Spartoi team had said that there was no difference at all. So Maka lacks appeal as either sex, it seems.

On the battle between Stein and Maka: Stein uses his body a lot. Maka uses Soul as an _extension_ of her body. The main difference between them in this respect is that if either is suddenly weaponless, Stein's chances of success in battle don't change as drastically as Maka's would, or so goes my theory. Also the technique where Maka uses her legs to use the scythe is an actual move that she had used on the moon in the battle against Chrona when she was wielding her father. Because Maka and her father are related and have a familial bond, they don't need to sync wavelengths to use one another (Volume 24 Chapter 106: The Dark Side of the Moon Part 3).

"Blitz" is also of the Soul Eater's original soundtrack. It's the song that played in the anime when Stein and Spirit challenged Chrona in Italy.


	4. The Engagement

_Chapter Four: The Engagement_

"How was that different from madness?"

Kidd glared at the two star agent who stood before him. Michael Lee was the nephew of a Chinese ambassador who was found to have weapon blood. Like his uncle and father, CEO of a shipping company, he was intolerant of the world of witches and very involved with pre-kishin and Black Blood research. Maka had confided in Kidd in the past that Lee disgruntled her.

"I feel it in his soul," she had said softly. "He's angry. He's always angry. Especially with Soul or Stein- _hakase_ or I around. He's respectful and a hard worker, but he hates us." Her poise was firm and her voice, though low, was steady. But her large expressive eyes betrayed her. Lee's ceaseless hate had infected the peace of her soul. Kidd requested that Lee be assigned to a separate Shibusen research team a fortnight later.

Michael Lee was brilliant. He'd proven himself to be capable of working beside Stein and Maka who were leading the world's pre-kishin research. But he was intolerant and racist. The paradox in his personality made Kidd wonder how much of an asset he was to Shibusen.

Death the Kidd returned to the present. He said firmly, "You mean to imply that the Black Blood that resides in Soul is as threatening as the kishin."

"Yes sir," Lee answered. "Had you not seen it in the battle that transpired last week? When that team resonates they are able to throw the souls around them into anarchy. Had they used more force then, would we have been in a situation so different from that at Baba Yaga's Castle two years ago?"

Kidd crossed his legs on his throne. One hand he let the knuckles press against his lips as he weighed Lee's words. The other hand he rested coolly on the armrest, his rings glittering. Elizabeth and Patricia were on either side of him and they stared at Lee and his small entourage coldly.

Liz thought, "What is this, some sort of riot to kick Maka and Soul out of Kidd's inner circle or something?"

Patty voiced her thoughts boorishly: "You brats got a lotta nerve badmouthing our crew like that!"

"Soul and Maka would never fall prey to the Black Blood and its insanity," Liz agreed from her position beside a god. "You don't know how hard they've fought against it to be where they are now."

Michael Lee's gaze flicked between the sisters. It was Kidd who raised his hand to stay them with a gentle call of their respective names. He addressed Lee's coterie: "While it's true that Soul and Maka have the joint ability to impact external soul wavelengths, this is not new knowledge. I hardly see why a sect should suddenly develop within Shibusen that starts pointing fingers at friends and calls them enemies. That sort of action rots the fruit from the inside out and our true enemies would consider this an opening. Lee, let's speak rationally. Even if Maka and Soul are as much of a threat as the kishin is, they've chosen to fight on the side that demotes the concept of flooding the world in madness, as is Asura's goal. Wouldn't you then say that this balances itself out perfectly?"

Venom seemed to inflect for a moment in Lee's tone. "A scale under stress can break, Lord Death."

The analogy did not go over the young god's head.

"If I do not trust humanity— _no_ , not even that," Kidd got to his feet. "If I do not trust my _friends_ , then how can I expect integration, unity, and its resulting strength to survive?" The Thompson sisters framed him as he said to Lee and his groupies: "You need more courage, Michael Lee. You sound very, very frightened."

And with that he was dismissed.

"I don't blame him for his wariness," Havar said, appearing with Ox. They were in jackets and scarves and their hair was dusted in snow. Had Kim transported them from the north suddenly?

Kidd's expression was taut. He heard Elizabeth declare, "What? Are you siding with that four-eyed narcissistic jerk?"

"While I admit he's _arrogant_ ," Havar answered, thinking of how easily Lee thought he could tell the god of death to abandon his friends, "I do not side with him. I _understand_ his _fear_. The _revival_ of the kishin alone was felt across the entire planet and in our midst we have a team that has the potential to do the same, as demonstrated in last week's mock battle with Stein- _hakase_."

"This is an unprecedented development," Kidd said darkly. "If we cultivate doubt among ourselves then our new hidden enemies will be able to snake their way in and rip us apart from the inside out." _If only Maka and Soul hadn't demonstrated that ability so publicly…_ he thought. _Had I assumed that, given their powers were so common knowledge, that they would only be viewed positively in public light?_

 _No,_ he countered, _the problem lies with the additional information that Michael Lee has. He's equipped with the knowledge of what the Black Blood is: a melted down demon sword, the evil Ragnarok, and everything we know of Medusa's experimentation with it_.

"We need to make sure that this doesn't spread," Kidd said finally. "Michael and his research team have come to this conclusion, but who else knows of it? Havar, I need your objective analysis and rational thinking to help me quarantine this situation. Investigate how much Michael Lee knows, his theories, who he associates with."

"Yes sir."

"I've never liked him," Jacqueline said. "He's an ass. His thinking's binary and chauvinist, and he doesn't hide his contempt for others."

Kim was glaring at where the agent left. "Why do you keep him around, Kidd? He's bound to stir up trouble."

"Faith, Kim," Death replied. "He's not our enemy. He's just human."

Lord Death walked to the library.

The events that were happening in the world? He scoffed. Total disarray; it was almost as though, in part, Asura had gotten his wish. Anti-Shibusen factions were growing more and more assertive demanding its disbanding and calling Shinigami a fraud; witches refusing the peaceful treaty were creating revolts in not only in the mortal realm, but in the witches' realm as well; pre-kishin behavior was growing odder and odder, more human, for lack of a better word; and triangles everywhere seemed intent on becoming asymmetrical.

"Equilateral and isosceles triangles are the best, but scalene are the worst," Kidd was saying. "They feel like they're falling. Like the leaning Tower of Pisa. My father was angry at me for trying to straighten the leaning Tower of Pisa."

Liz replied, "Isn't it like one of the seven wonders of the world or something?"

"Seven?"

"Yeah, I thi—!"

"It should be eight."

"Kidd, it's just an expression."

"Liz, Patty, drop all of your things. We're going to find the eighth wonder of the world."

Patty laughed. "Yeah! Road trip!" She began bouncing off the walls. Where Elizabeth began to panic Kidd was staring at his reflection. He said, "Where is the most balanced place in the world that is bound to have the eighth wonder?"

"Why is there a mirror in the library anyway?" Liz suddenly asked.

"I requested that it be brought here," Kidd answered, "I'm expecting a call from…"

The mirror began to ring. "Ah, speak of the devil. Hello, Maka."

"Good evening, Lord Death," Maka replied brightly. She looked tired: her expression was pale and her eyes cloudy. Behind her was the scenery of any of Death City's cobblestone streets. "Did you get my most recent report?"

"The analysis of the soul that you harvested from Honduras," Kidd replied with a nod. "It's the most disgruntling yet. The baby kishin is still within Professor Stein's custody, I hope?"

"Rather than being in our custody, its loitering around us willingly," Maka said with difficulty. "It's difficult to decipher, but it seems as though it only wants to be near to the soul of the larger kishin, the kishin that Professor Stein has begun calling the Mother against my protests." She took in Kidd's frown and continued: "We're starting to think that the baby kishin may have been an extension of the larger pre kishin, somehow separated, and that the connection still exists, not unlike…"

"A mother and child?" Kidd finished.

Maka's uncomfortable glance shifted in response.

"Maka, are you telling me that pre-kishin can _procreate_ now?"

She swallowed, but her throat was dry and the action reminded her of her hunger. She eventually answered, "That is Professor Stein's most recent theory." To herself she morbidly thought: _He's quite fascinated by it, though its implications mean that humanity is headed for ruination and extinction_.

Elizabeth and Patricia looked on in quiet shock. Lord Death dropped his face into his palm and thought of a thousand threats to his world at once. Lee's statement returned to him: "A scale under stress can break."

Snapping back to reality Kidd ordered, "Maka, I'm pulling you out of the pre-kishin research for a while."

"What? Why?"

"I need you to work with Michael Lee on the Black Blood research."

Her eyes widened incrementally but combined with her sallow complexion it was enough to elicit an expression of pure horror. Her mouth opened to dissuade him.

"I need you for this assignment, Maka," Lord Death interrupted her. "You are one of the few people alive who have dealt with the Black Blood as intimately as you have. Your knowledge is invaluable. And I need someone that I can trust to keep an eye on Michael Lee."

 _Havar will control the situation from afar and Maka will be directly involved with everything of Lee's team_ , Death the Kidd thought. _That should sedate my issue with him and his team_. He said, "And I almost forgot."

"There's more?" Maka groaned.

"Soul is your new partner. Permanently."

 _Author's Note:_ This chapter is a pivotal section of the developing plot for me. There was previously another chapter that involved Maka and Soul venturing to Rio de Janerio where they encountered the crow witch again, but I left it out because the plot was thickening with a promise of complication ahead. I felt it would have better preserved the Soul Eater characters' personalities and responses if I minimized the amount of original characters and that I would score a better chance of not confusing my audience.

There were times when I forgot that I'm actually writing a romance: but I believe that setting up the background is as important as the saucy parts, you know? Thanks for your patience and I'm all for ideas and discussions and personal opinions about the world I'm painting and the Soul Eater world itself.


	5. In Which There are Partnerships

_Chapter Five: In Which There are Partnerships_

Soul's eyes were dark and ringed. His lousy expression didn't meet his eyes which were uncharacteristically vigilant. Yet the rest of his posture suggested that he was out cold, catching up on the sleep deprivation that was the occupational hazard of being a Death Scythe.

He didn't like wearing black because it contrasted his hair too much. But his appearances meant very little now, at Shibusen, where it was the soul that mattered. So he shrugged on the weathered slacks, almost snuggled up to the familiarity of the fibers. It was cold in Stein-hakase's office besides.

"You should stop glaring at it like that," Stein-hakase said suddenly.

Soul's eyes were the only thing that was animated about him. They darted to the mad professor's form that was slung over a rack of charts and scribbles. "Keeping this thing around is weird." At the very least it was unconventional and unsafe, even for the professor.

But true to Stein's words the baby kishin egg didn't hurt anyone, didn't get in anyone's way (whomsoever chose to enter his chilly office that is), and mostly kept to a dank corner of the room where the other kishin egg soul floated in its glassy prison.

The baby kishin egg, free from Soul's trapping gaze, skittered off into anonymity.

"Keeping this 'thing' around," Stein-hakase replied, "is research. I'm watching its behavior in a confined environment. There's no better place to keep a threat than within the heart of a guarded fortress."

 _Such as Asura's case, I guess_ , Soul thought to himself. And he couldn't disagree with the professor either. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, eh?"

"Speaking of which," Stein looked up for the first time that evening. "Why are you here, Soul-kun?"

Soul hesitated.

"How is that even remotely related to what I just said?" for the first time the rest of his body moved with his words. He sat up and unfolded his arms and twisted in the chair to get a better look at his sensei.

"Well if we're on the topic of friends, shouldn't you be meeting up with Maka-chan? You two are partners again, right?"

Soul settled into a reclining position again. Again he was the embodiment of lethargy and stillness. "Yeah," he replied simply.

"Hm?" to himself, Stein-hakase hummed in amusement. It was due to tiredness, he saw through his Perception, that Soul lounged as he did. It was also in part due to his character, his need to remain cool. At the same time it was meant as an inhibitant: Stein could see that Soul was excited and happy to be Maka's partner. He was all but bursting at the seams.

He returned to his pervious question with more curiosity: "Why _are_ you here?" Is it so that he could chance upon Maka?

But Soul sobered up a bit too much for it to be such a pleasure call. "Maka's dad is looking for me."

"Spirit-sempai? What for?"

"He's pissed that he's not his daughter's weapon."

And Soul had good reason to hide. Until Maka caught him by the collar Spirit refused to settle down. He'd rambled and cried and moaned about being divorced from his daughter as Kami divorced him, being rejected as she rejected him…Maka dragged him to the roof to settle the matter.

Death the Kidd watched them go with relief. At his right Patricia asked, "Why'd ya pair up Maka and Soul again, Kidd?"

"Maka is too strong to be without a weapon that's befitting of her and Soul's duties are catching up with him. They'll need one another to keep their sanity." Also he could tell that Maka was getting frustrated with Jacob, as patient as she had been with him, and with Michael Lee gearing up to strike them down they'd be more formidable teamed up than as separate top-notch Shibusen agents.

Kidd felt himself bouncing among a thousand duties, a thousand calls: he had the world in his hands. With Liz and Patty by his side, even if just for moral support, he identified the value of keeping friends close. He needed everyone to remain tightly knit. Tough times were preparing to rear their ugly heads.

He was grateful for the shoulder rub that Liz offered him now. She mumbled, "I'm sorry we can't be of any more help to you, Kidd."

He was surprised. Of course they wouldn't be ignorant of his multiplying stresses. He was touched. He touched their heads one after the other. "You two have been more than a great help. I'd have been a very different god hadn't you been by my side."

"Kidd…"

"Just stay by my side."

"Okay."

"On either side," he clarified.

Patty laughed. "Okay!"

As per Soul's and Stein-hakase's separate predictions Maka did appear in the chilly office. But it was much, much later and by then Soul had genuinely fallen asleep. When she walked in she paused, not expecting her partner to be here—here least of all. Most people avoided Stein now that he had a pre-kishin for a pet.

"Good evening, Stein-hakase."

"Hello, Maka. I heard that you've been transferred from my team."

She looked forlorn. "Kidd wants me on the Black Blood research."

"A wise call."

"I'd rather not work with that Lee character."

"He's a passionate bookworm at heart. The two of you have more in common than I think you would realize."

"That hardly makes me feel better."

He laughed. "Do me a favor and take Soul home, would you? He's been waiting on you for a long time."

She took a good look at Soul for the first time. He was wearing some oversized long sleeved shirt that was wide in the neck and wrinkled around his wrists that were loosely about him in a protected embrace against the cold. His head was leaning back and she took notice how long his hair was for the first time. The black contrasted his shock white hair more than his dark leather jacket ever did. He was also very long: his legs were propped against the floor and crossed at the ankles like he was cool, or something.

Stein watched her produce a thick tome from behind her back. A single trail of smoke rising from his cigarette, he steeled himself to watch the impact. But to his fascination she lowered the book. For a moment he imagined that there was tenderness in her eyes. But it was only imagination because no sooner had she dropped the book she slapped his face.

It was not a love tap.

Soul flew out of his chair, arms and legs going every which way, losing his bearings and falling to the ground in a cluttered sounding crash. Maka had sidestepped his antics. In the argument that was to follow Stein-hakase reminisced and thought: "How nostalgic." When they left the silence was lonely.

The first nights living together proved especially rough. Their actions were discordant, their sleeping patterns erratic. Soul would be awake through the night suffering from jet lag and Maka would wake up at three in the morning and begin yelling that he can't be making omelets at two in the morning…Mornings were noisy and neighbors checked in regarding the anarchy. Soul began sporting more bruises than he'd ever remembered having.

But benefits quickly fell into place as well. Maka was quick with reports and documentations and organizing time. She throttled his schedule and picked up the workload he was unable to manage. She in turn began eating healthier: with the time split between them there was more time for one to work while the other prepared dinner. Her skin that had been increasingly growing paler and paler the past few months regained a glow.

Their fights didn't desist however. The hallways were reminded of that. Yet all at once fighting arenas were regularly full of fans watching Maka Albarn and the Last Death Scythe practice. Spectators once had the pleasure of Black Star joining them in a mock battle.

To Maka's confusion however, Soul was moody. Familiar with the discomfort that came as a result of being observed by Soul Perception, she respectfully didn't use her ability where her partner was concerned conserving his privacy and preserving his trust in her. But that left her in the dark as to the source of contentedness in his little gestures and expressions that were the exact opposite. She began to think to herself, "Is he happy that we're partners or does he regret it?"

She took note that their biological timekeepers were still unsynchronized and that added to their irritability towards one another and she accepted that he was more than likely unused to being accompanied on nearly every mission he had to attend (the idea itself seemed to have made him especially irate) and so she exercised patience. But before a month passed of them being intimately involved in one another's lives, she cornered him and asked him what the issue was.

She'd chosen the park to have this particular spat in, and the lazy Sunday vibe had kept the two of them relatively placated notwithstanding the gnawing that was within Maka's heart until she confronted Soul.

Soul was readjusting his hairband when she asked. "Hah? What are you talking about?"

She explained that he seemed off-putting, that his energy was rejecting at some moments and neutral at others. "Is there something you aren't telling me?"

"Jesus, Maka, barely anything's happened for me to be hiding anything from you. And what's with you besides? We're partners, not lovers. I don't need to tell you everything."

"It's my business to know if it's going to affect how we relate to one another," she remained firm and stood in his path when he made to move away. "As your _partner_ I need to know if something's wrong."

He clicked his tongue, angry that she blocked his path as though he were a rowdy kid. She was determined today! He was in a pretty lax mood until his hairband broke in the middle of their shopping trip—not that she had noticed that detail. For some reason the fact the she hadn't noticed irritated him.

"As my partner you need to trust me to tell you if something's wrong," Soul countered.

"Are you saying I don't trust you?"

"You tell me, you're the one trying to start a fight asking me to spill out my guts."

"I'm not fighting you, Soul!"

"People usually start shouting when they're fighting!"

She gave a hybrid sound, a cross between a huff and a shrill screech. Soul would have winced if he weren't weaned into the past three and a half weeks of verbal battles. "You're so _resistant_! My partner _listened_ to me!"

Soul looked at her critically and suddenly. Was she talking about him from the past? When they were easily partners and he considered her comments (which he still does!), or was she referring to Jacob, who was—so far as he could tell—far more pliant in Maka's hands?

"I _do_ listen to you."

"I wasn't talking about you…!"

 _Aha._

"You were talking about that _brat_ , right? When you figured no one would be your partner you had to grow one, huh?"

Maka flushed. "Don't talk about Jacob that way!"

"What's so great about that kid that you'd need to defend him?" Soul relished, incrementally, in the falter of Maka's aggressive proactive pace. She physically reclined away from him. "It's because you chose such an uncool partner that Kidd had to team us up!"

She had no respect for herself! Which self-respecting master meister picks a weapon that barely has half a star?

She retorted with force: "You mean you never wanted me for your partner!"

"Whether I did or didn't really wasn't my choice!"

Their shouting that was growing in timbre as well as in intensity suddenly came to its climax, an unsatisfying silence that surprised them both and suddenly allowed for multiple understandings and misunderstandings to be absorbed into their minds.

Soul witnessed Maka's expression crumple and fall and flush and her knees weaken and her fists clench and tremble. "So you don't want me for your partner." She managed to say those words and Soul was frightened.

Soul remembered how she looked when she first told him that no-one wanted to be her partner. He remembered knowing that she felt sort of content, if displaced, about that scenario so long as Soul was her friend and yet, with the sudden misunderstanding it seemed that Soul had robbed them of her friendship with his thoughtless outburst.

It was her fault, damn it! She had an unrivaled talent of pissing people off beyond comprehension!

She turned around. He stiffened, wondering what was next to come. She said darkly, "I'm sorry." She said that and he wanted to grab her and shake her and tell her to fuck off and that he was moody because he was stupidly elated that they were partners again and that was uncool and he started getting angry at himself, not at her, but they would argue anyway and it was a fucked up twist of events…

She walked away.

 _Author's Note:_ I apologize that this took some time to come out. Chapter five was giving me trouble since chapter three was conceived. I've finally resolved some minor issues that presented themselves and hopefully created a transition of events which doesn't dissolve away the conflicts of the plot but simultaneously creates room for romance to flourish.

Please provide your opinions on this: does the narrative voice flow?

Thank you for your patience and your reviews are forever welcome.


	6. The Moon

_Chapter Six: The Moon_

"Fly me to the moon; let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars. In other words hold my hand; in other words, darling, kiss me."

"What song is that?" Jacob asked.

She'd drifted off in the silence that had lapsed between them. She came back to reality and heard the low murmur of a dozen conversations that filtered in and out of Deathbucks Café. She blinked at Jacob sitting across from her blowing on his tea. He looked up through his bangs when he noticed she was gaping at him. "Albarn-sensei?"

"Eh?" she voiced.

"Are you dreaming?"

"I'm…" she was a lot of things. Lethargic, not sleeping properly, not eating properly, annoyed, angry—and yet her work was flourishing with all of the frustrated energy she'd been pouring into it. Michael Lee learned to avoid her the past few days. Unbeknownst to her he described her as "intense" and "scary."

"You were singing a while ago. It sounds familiar." Jacob began to hum it, trying to place it, eventually shook his hair in resignation and drank his tea.

Maka mumbled, "I don't remember." She crossed her ankles and wiggled her toes on the inside of her sneakers. The motion reminded her of the groceries by her feet that she had picked up just as Jacob spied her and asked her out for a little. It was partially out of guilt that she agreed, but she was welcome to friendly company.

Jacob was disappointed when she told him of her reassignment, but he took it well and found a meister soon after. "I wanted to be a meister or an autonomous weapon, but I really liked being partnered up with you so I decided to give one of my classmates a shot when he asked," he told her one afternoon. It had been a few weeks since then.

"How's your partner?"

"He's alright. I think we're friends now. We've started fighting a lot."

Maka giggled. The idea reminded her of Soul and their arguments and then of their latest spat. She sobered, sighed, sipped, slipped out of reality. Half an hour later she was alone again taking her time up the stairs to DWMA. The sunset's light was on her back. She was nibbling on a piece of chocolate and took the stairs two at a time. She was counting to keep her mind clear.

"Fifty-two, fifty-four, fifty-six, fifty-eight," she started taking them three at a time. "Sixty-eight, seventy-one, seventy-three, seventy-six."

She had purchased a white shirt and jeans trousers to spend the night at school after her bath. She didn't want to go home. She hadn't been home for a week.

Her thoughts were tottering towards self-pity when she exited the showers. She was pulling her hair into a ponytail when she crossed paths with Michael Lee. "Miss Albarn," he called.

"You're still here?"

"I was planning on spending the night."

Begrudgingly, "So was I."

"Ah, I see. That's perhaps just as well. I've sent the others home. There's no reason you and I couldn't work in the same space."

He was mature, for which she was thankful.

When Maka discovered him again at midnight she found him listening to blood samples. She asked him what he was doing.

"Listening to blood samples," he replied.

She hesitated to ask her question again.

"The Black Blood is independent, you wrote that in one of the journals you presented, isn't that so?"

"In part," Maka attempted to recollect exactly what she had written. "In my initial battles against the Black Blood, every aspect was weaponized and returned to the body that it was infused with. But the Black Blood is not independent, it cannot truly act on its own."

"Yes, I agree, it's like a virus, it needs a host to thrive."

Maka bristled. "I wouldn't call it a _virus_ ," she began in the defense of Chrona and Soul.

Michael Lee paused and removed his thumb from under his chin. It was then that he remembered with whom he was speaking. He promptly apologized but it was as a matter of formality, stuffy and emotionless. Maka grew irritated at such a response but listened as Michael Lee went on: "Because of the accounts of the Black Blood having a separate soul I was curious if I could find soul frequencies in the samples collected. Unlike you and Stein-hakase, I don't have Soul Perception so I need to use other means."

"Hence you were… _listening_ for soul frequencies?"

"Not unlike the Last Death Scythe's ability to convert soul wavelengths into sound waves, I was trying to create a similar affect in the lab. Of course it's a very rustic prototype but it's worked in my trial runs." Maka observed the machine he indicated to. It was a reinterpreted analogue radio taken apart and had pieces added onto it. In its wired paraphernalia she recognized a gauge of sorts that was, as of the moment, dead.

"What makes you think that these samples have a wavelength? They've been without a connection to anyone with the Black Blood for years." _It's true it retains some bizarre properties but none that were vaguely threatening or even helpful_ , Maka thought. _And what's more is that its dead here without Chrona._

Michael Lee said, "You're right. I would need a live sample."

Maka blinked.

"Can you request on my behalf an audience with the Last Death Scythe?"

She answered, "I'm sure he would answer if you asked him directly." She evaded.

Lee frowned in curiosity. "Soul Eater is _your_ partner, is he not? As a member of the Black Blood research there's none as qualified to ask for his time as you."

She sighed her consent before marching off to her half of the room. Michael Lee watched her a moment in speculation and returned to the task at hand: he would have to perfect this instrument for the actual experiment.

"That's _In Other Words_ by Frank Sinatra isn't it?" Michael Lee appeared in front of her desk with two mugs. He set one down next to her paperwork. This was hours after they last spoke. The question and the gesture floored her. She did nothing but stare at the mug for a while, identified it as hot chocolate.

"Excuse me?" she said eventually, sounding almost winded.

"The song that you were humming," he clarified and sat in a nearby chair. "It's an old song performed by a myriad of musicians but popularized by Frank Sinatra."

She was singing again? She sipped the chocolate. She murmured her thanks. Lee inclined his head in response. He said conversationally, "You never struck me as the sort to listen to jazz music."

"I'm not…I don't, it's my partner," she stopped. "You're talking to me."

"An astute observation."

"You've never spoken to me—truly—before," she went on.

"Ah, well, yes. That's true."

"I thought you hated me."

"Hate? No." He sipped his coffee. _According to Lord Death I'm frightened._

"I've had my head cleared out by one of your teammates recently. Havar, I believe his name was. He made me realize that I was upset at you because of your _pedigree_."

"My…?" she was ready to take offense. Was he comparing her to a _dog?_ A well-bred dog?

"Your father is a Death Scythe, your mother a respected technician from whom you inherited your abilities, your best friend Lord Death himself, your partner the Last Death Scythe; you struck me as the odd one out in this assemblage. I assumed that you were only on the Spartoi team because you had friends in high places."

Maka said lowly over the rim of her mug, "And now?"

"Now? Actually, I rather like you."

Her eyebrows rose. She sensed doubt in him, but she felt truth as well. "And Soul?" she asked.

"What of your partner?"

"Do you like him?"

"By extension."

They were silent a moment. Her newfound comrade asked suddenly, "Is he the reason you haven't gone home?"

She flinched.

"After all these years you'd think you two would get along."

Did they? She wondered. She was in the middle of questioning herself as a technician. It was as Michael Lee said, actually, even if he hadn't meant it in the following: was her power her own or was it a result of her heritage and who was around her? Her Soul Perception, her anti-demon wavelength, her natural capabilities as a mesiter, they were hereditary. Her strength on the battlefield was drawn from her friends. She constantly relied on Soul. All she had to call her own were her books and her courage and the latter, though she was praised for it, seemed to hold no real power at all.

And now that Soul had been wielded by Lord Death, now that he had had the truest of all meisters, she felt that he doubted her as his. She felt incapable. She felt redundant. She felt unworthy, and that was the strangest word she could find that struck so close to her heart. She had felt this way before, so many times before. But who was she? Jacob had said she didn't stand out—she only went on missions as a last resort and spent most of her time researching, reading, and teaching while her comrades were ambassadors and inventors at the frontiers of the new age.

Her despair descended into her stomach.

"I'm going to get some rest in the infirmary," Maka alerted Lee.

"Alright." He was quickly engrossed in his own findings.

Maka walked through the hallways with a flashlight as a solitary guide. Where there were windows moonlight was provided. She didn't need it besides, too acquainted with the innards of Shibusen. The infirmary door was unlocked—had Nygus left it so out of habit for Maka's benefit?—and threw herself into the first bed she saw and cried.


	7. Hoop

_Chapter Seven: Hoop_

Soul Eater was playing B-ball with the locals of the neighborhood. He wasn't good enough to dunk perhaps, but he was fit enough to keep up with the routine players on the field. His team constituted of a couple younger teenagers and a young man whose wife was sitting in the shade with their newborn.

Soul had dug out his old headband for the occasion. It was shirts against skins and the bright orange of his band no doubt looked weird against his white dress shirt that was sticking to his sweaty skin. He looked like he walked out of a business meeting and slapped on something to look archaic and "hip." But there were strangers around him who were dressed weirder.

On a team the concept of _stranger_ broke away. Instead there were people whom you wanted to uplift and whom you expected to lift you up. In sport the language barrier and the acquaintance barrier was surpassed.

Someone in a shirt called, " _Aqui! Aqui!"_ And Soul managed to slip around an opponent before tossing the basketball. The Spanish-speaking player dunked. After a couple of whistles and pats on the back, scores were called out and sneakers noisily positioned themselves nilly-willy across the court.

The court was surrounded by lush trees and benches and multi-coloured apartments beyond. The street was lower than the court so one couldn't see much of a passing car. It was late afternoon.

Someone fell and a member of the opposite team helped them to their feet. Later the newlywed said that he had to take his family home. The teams disbanded with hearty handshakes.

A glass bottle appeared in front of his forehead when he was preoccupied with the laces of his _Converse_. He stared at it for a moment: the liquid within seemed an obnoxious bright green that, for some reason, reminded him of a little girl in red ribbons throwing a tantrum.

"It's _lamune_ ," Maka said. "I used to drink this all the time when I used to live in Tokyo."

Soul took into consideration that Maka looked thin, pale, harassed and weak. Her voice was no indication nor was her posture, but because he lived with her he could see it. The signs were too subtle to describe.

His first reaction to her sudden appearance was to shout at her. But he could imagine she had probably swallowed pride and stubbornness to approach him as she did. So he at last accepted the drink with gruff thanks and moved his bag so that she could sit down next to her.

She was in clothes he didn't recognize. She said, "I saw you in my lecture today."

Yes, he'd made a cameo appearance at the last seat in her NOT Meister-Weapon Genetic History class. No one seemed to recognize him because he was in a hoodie and had his head down for the majority of the class. He was planning on ambushing her to talk. He fell asleep when she reached European Martial Arts.

"Soul," Maka said working their way up to the nitty-gritty: "I doubt myself a lot. I doubt myself too often for me to consider myself an affective asset to DWMA. I wonder if I have a right to be here and if everything that I've accomplished with you and our friends has been a sham. I don't want to hold anyone back more than I already have."

"Maka, what are you talking about?"

"I'm weak, Soul."

"Who isn't?" Soul barked, "What, you think just because Black Star and Kidd are outrageously strong that means that everyone else has to be too?"

"It's different if it's a matter of my strength being my own."

"Of course it's your own! Whose else's could it be? Were you really not coming home for the past week because you thought that you were dead weight?"

She didn't answer. He felt like hitting her back into her senses. He swallowed that sudden swell of irritation for later. She looked too despondent to take any sort of blow. He said, "When you took Jacob to be your partner I was pissed like hell."

She looked up with genuine surprise. "You were?"

His smirk was half self-pity half humor. "I figured that I was the only one who'd ever be your partner and I was pissed that you didn't think the same way."

She said, "But…but Soul, you were assigned to Shinigami-sama's side!"

"Yeah, there was that." He dismissed as simply as one skips a difficult math problem. "I kinda went overboard cuz it wasn't cool but I…I uh, I was really glad Kidd paired us up again. Bouncing off walls even."

He flushed and clicked his tongue like he just realized what he said and heard how less cool it was aloud than in his head. He figured that she needed to get the message however so he continued with as much bluntness as he could muster. "I was sorta grossed out by how happy I was that I figured I'd tone it down but I ended up pissing you off. You still got no fuckin' right to leave home for a week just because you're depressed, by the way," he said this with sudden venom.

She was quiet so he said clearly, "I'm here for you to talk to me, Maka. Have you forgotten that's what partners are for?"

Her hands were fisted in her lap and her head was bowed. Her voice was congested as she apologized. Soul rubbed her head and breathed out. "It's cool."

That was one hurdle.

Soul did not scold her later as he thought he would have had the energy to do. Whenever she stopped moving and was staring into space—when she was obviously not reading—he purposefully interrupted her with a light pat on her head each time he passed. The more often he did it into the progressing night the lighter the mood got. Eventually she hit him with a pillow and called him "gross." He pulled on her cheeks in counter-attack.

The rest of the week ended with the long awaited recording session with Michael Lee. In the abandoned openness of the Nevada desert the experimenter was moving back and forth toggling different twigs of machinery. He had an assistant nearby who was in goggles and headphones. His countenance could not be discerned.

Lee explained over the roar of a robust generator, "Soul Resonance works by a meister and weapon matching the frequency of their soul wavelengths so that the meister can send their frequency to the weapon who sends it back like an echo. _Unlike_ an echo, the wavelength is preserved and amplified until its eventual release. How my tools work is that it reacts to the _energy released_ and sends the reaction to a computer that converts code into music. I'm effectively _downloading_ your soul resonance," for the majority of the explanation he was speaking in monotone because of the loudness of the equipment.

Soul stuck and thumbs up and Maka nodded. They subsequently performed several examples of Soul Resonance of different amplitudes recorded and performed at longer and longer intervals.

"It'll take a few days for the computer to sort through," Michael Lee said. "It's a lot of information."

Soul asked, "So what if you don't hear any anomalies? What if there's no proof that the Black Blood is still in there?"

Michael Lee smiled with deceptive good humor. He replied, "Success is the result of continual failure, Death Scythe-san."

And despite himself, how Soul watched him hesitantly in the lazy sunlight struck Michael Lee that he was pretty cool.

It was in the middle of the night some several days later—perhaps it was a week—when Soul was roused out of bed violently. The collar of his sleepwear was balled up in the tough hands of his meister. He began to question groggily. As his eyes cleared her voice gushed with inconsistencies in inflection and content. She was already in gloves and coat but wore her pajamas beneath. Half a minute later they were in the skies of Death City.

Soul didn't hide his yawn. "You mind filling me in on what this is about, Maka?"

"I hear something on the wind," she replied abstractly. "It's almost as if it's calling me. But my Soul Perception isn't…"

"What if it's a trap?"

"The energy doesn't feel malignant."

"Alright." And so they resonated and her Soul Perception became larger and grander than anything she ever could have experienced alone. It came slowly and as it did she felt a bit less and less aware of her body. Balancing on the staff of a flying Soul was automatic and supplemented by his movements.

Then there was music, and they both heard it.

 _Fly me to the moon, where we can land among the stars_ —there was the sound of someone playing in sand. Soon to follow there was the sound of the ocean breathing on the shore. _In other words, hold my hand:_ when Maka opened her eyes again she was standing barefoot on a beach. In her right hand was Soul's hand. In her left was a colder foreign hand.

 _In other words…_ Maka's eyes grew glassy from tears. A part of her knew it to be illusion, that her physical body was still floating in the cold sky above Death City, but with their combined power Soul, Maka and Chrona had come to share the same mental space. It was like a Chain Resonance: that's what it felt like.

An unspoken law ruled in their subconscious that they were not allowed to let go of one another's hands. It made Maka's embrace of Chrona awkward and limited to her chin on their slim shoulder. Chrona's pale face flushed from the compassion Maka offered.

Chrona spoke softly and gradually about their rousing. They realized that they needed to get in touch with Maka and had therefore attempted to communicate via long distance resonance: the only way Chrona could contact anyone from the moon was in brief bursts of concentrated wavelengths. In the attempt to reach Maka something happened to the pre-kishin of the world, as though they were sedated as they would be by anti-demon wavelength.

Chrona had synthesized a form of anti-demon wavelength. The idea immediately aroused Maka's scholarly side. Her questions began to resemble those of a researcher than meeting a long lost friend. Soul cleared his throat to remind her.

Also, there was not much time.

If Chrona was awake then it was possible for Asura to rouse as well. This was not easily done, but the possibility robbed the friends of their time. Maka was predictably in tears. Soul asked why she needed to contact them so earnestly. Chrona described that what woke her was an incomplete seal. The Black Blood wasn't finished: they needed the piece that was in Soul.

Soul said he didn't know how to give it to her. Chrona told him to open his hand. In his free hand, his right hand, was the little demon, red faced and impish in all meanings of the word. He kicked his heel and bid bon voyage to Soul Eater and his partner, snapped to the jazz of Frank Sinatra. When Chrona held him he became a puzzle piece so black and opaque that there was no material to liken it too: it simply looked like a hole in Chrona's bone white hand.

To part ways broke Maka's heart. She promised to find a way to release them. She had to release them. Chrona smiled widely and Soul felt, in another context, Maka had already released Chrona from more pain and bondage and fear than either of them could imagine. Chrona let go of Maka's hand and they brutal returned to their mortal bodies.

Quickly, quickly, and with the suddenness of a dropping guillotine, Chrona's wavelength vanished entirely, scoured from the atmosphere. Somewhere in Death City a kishin egg suddenly became very hostile. The incident slowly spread around the world. Normalcy descended on the world and Maka, stunned and drained, didn't cry until they were safely indoors.


	8. Untitled

_Chapter Eight: Untitled_

The way how the world was beginning to work was that demon weapon-meister history was steadily growing more popular. Lord Death was invited to interviews and to be featured on podcasts that had previously had no tabs open for the unsettling, the occult, the weird—lest it was those controversial sites and radio programs.

But Lord Death had said, "The pre-kishin are a real force in our world. Sometimes the lay person does not realize that their neighbor has gone down a corrupted path. Sometimes in urban societies we are so used to murder and death that when an instance comes up where someone is killed for their _soul_ , it's thrown in with everything else. But it's very, very different. And what matters is the soul."

The research branches of Shibusen and the concept of the DWMA-CIA was bleeding into blogs, apps, and newspapers. More and more people around the world were growing more aware and began realizing that their anomalies were the result of lineage, of being at the end of an uncharted bloodline of weapon or meister. More and more the global census began to report that, in effect, Arachne had outdone herself.

It was bittersweet irony that the world had an army that could balance out its impurities, its corruptions, and its senseless deaths. Lord Death considered opening schools in other continents. He needed Spirit Albarn to represent him in India; he needed Ox to go to the Russian embassy. Shibusen had its international branches, but its school was in Nevada, USA. They needed another academy in the east to train the influx of incoming students.

Maka and Tsubaki were chatting in Japanese over their lunch. "When you and Black Star had overseen the negotiations in Australia, what was the result?"

"They're drafting up plans for the school already, they've gained approval to. There was a weapon there, not quite a Death Scythe but very powerful, who was elected to be headmaster in Lord Death's stead. There's still the issue of teachers. Shibusen is understaffed where teachers are concerned."

She hummed in recognition. "Students have always been coming to Nevada," Maka replied. "Retired meisters and weapons may be approached to fill the gap."

Tsubaki said, rather hesitantly, "I've always meant to ask you, Maka."

"Hm?"

"Why hadn't your mother ever stayed with Shibusen? I've always heard she was a brilliant meister."

"She is," Maka beamed. "But Mama had other things that she had to do away from Shibusen."

"It would be fantastic if she could become a teacher for one of the foreign branches, don't you think?"

Maka replied pensively, "I can't imagine Mama staying in one place for very long."

When that left her lips Maka thought of herself. Teachers were in demand and she could fit the role perfectly. She was still a senior student, but she filled in for Professor Stein often enough. When she graduated, what would be her next step?

"It's more than just a growing institution," Ox discussed with Havar and Killik and Soul, "it's a growing industry. Humanity had seen the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution and the information revolution, and now we're living in the age of the fourth—a demon weapon-meister revolution. Organizations are popping up like wildfire, claiming to trace your lineage and test for weapon and meister blood. Unsanctioned schools are being erected, uneducated weapons being employed as bodyguards for the rich and the elite. All this is generating income, and it's dangerous to general safety."

"There was a case a few weeks ago of a witch being assaulted," Havar said grimly. His gaze was over his shoulder and on the hard skyline of Death City. "The person who was arrested reportedly had several souls in his possession, an assemblage of sound and corrupt souls. While awareness is a good thing, it's stabbing DWMA in the back—the school was erected to educate on how to use their powers, how to become stronger and a responsible member of a lesser explored niche of society. Now that education is being misinterpreted and should offenses like that one be repeated, it may not be too long before we have another Last Death Scythe to deal with."

The group was suddenly silent and sober.

"It's no game to become a Death Scythe of course," Ox went on, "even the most highly trained students were killed by witches in the past. But that doesn't mean that people won't try."

"And that'll hurt relations we have with the witches," Killik said, speaking up for the first time.

"Exactly so."

Soul took it all in, his hands in his pockets and his bangs in his face and the wind.

Excalibur was ranting about something.

Elizabeth held her hand out to Patty to shoot it.

Lord Death shouted, "You can't shoot a mystical and legendary weapon in the library!"

In softer tones he said, "I've been considering adding another course to the DWMA syllabus."

Interested, Excalibur asked, "Oh?"

"Magic," he replied. "We need to be properly educated on magic. Perhaps on not how to use it, but on what it is. I want DWMA to bridge the gap between humans and witches. The latter may be prone to destruction, but they are able to create a functional society among themselves. There must be a way for all of us to co-exist: witches have already been enrolled here."

"And you're fine with using this school, which your father went through pains to erect, as a bargaining chip towards that goal?"

"Towards the end that goal was also my father's, and he has left me to carry on the baton. I must do so as I see fit." His eyes grew steely when he spoke of the previous Reaper. They were eyes that were doubtful and tried to be resolute, that reflected stress and pain and hope and determination and purpose all at once in something so colossal and moving it was amazing that it existed in a single entity: but that was a god for you.

Patty began shooting.

Lord Death shouted at the Thompson sisters.

"…is the CEO of the car engines' manufacturing company that has made considerable donations to the DWMA European branch in Germany. He's been quoted to say that while demons are a threat to the world, every man should put in his own two cents to create peace. He disagrees with Lord Death's philosophy of equal evil and good existing in the world, that the latter should prevail in order for civilizations to be at peace," the radio host went on and on scarcely catching breath as he continued.

Maka was caught in the motion of watering the plants on the windowsill of the kitchen. She was singing _In Other Words_ softly and her eyes were rheumy with daydreams. When she sat down to read a book, a debate had broken out among the panel of guest speakers on the station about how the psyche responds to perpetual peace and stress, agreeing with, denouncing, or circling Kidd's belief and aim.

"I don't know how the hell you can listen to these old fags and read about old fags at the same time," Soul commented rudely. He clicked the radio off.

"I was listening to that," his partner said with weak venom.

"It's my turn to make dinner?"

"Pasta's in the fridge."

"No more fish?"

She glared at him.

"I'd cook it this time."

"Soul, a lot of things have been happening in the world since Asura and Chrona were sealed in the moon."

He grunted in acknowledgement.

"I think this place looks a lot different from when we first began at DWMA. So many people weren't this involved in what we did. I hadn't thought of it as much of anything before but…being a world apart had its benefits. There were no superficial arguments—though there was enough philosophical discourse."

"English."

" _What I mean is,"_ she sat up and said with bite, "there are too many people who don't understand what we do thinking that they're an integral part of this."

With the rim of the beer bottle to his lips he iterated: "This?"

"What we do. Defending the world from kishin. Protecting people and cultures. Doing things that normal people can't do."

"If you draw a map they _are_ a part of it. They're essentially at the bottom of the food chain."

Maka wasn't sure whether to laugh or wince at the inhumanity.

"Whether or not we like it though, we have to deal. Because things are just getting started."

That this was just the beginning seemed almost dreadful.

Soul and Maka were summoned into Lord Death's personal quarters at the dawn of strange news. An old family claiming relations to Soul was offering to invest in Shibusen's European school. They even claimed to be able to find teachers.

Kidd had mentioned, "With the disbanding of the Black Blood research there are a few scholars who are interested in employment in Germany, but I'm not sure whether or not this is a hoax. Soul?"

Soul was not pale, did not have his feet fixed into the ground. His back was not rigid, his eyes were not too fixed or too glazed or too nervous. He did not tremble nor fidget; he did not seem uncomfortable or unsettled. But there was definitely a disturbance in his being, something that made both Maka and Kidd watch him a bit more keenly.

He was not ignorant of their scrutiny. He replied: "It's not a hoax. My father keeps to his promises."

The statement being a dramatic turn of events was useful from Lord Death's perspective. He asked Soul Eater and his partner Maka Albarn to report to the Evans' family's graciousness and invite them personally to the gala to occur in two weeks as a pleasantry event to honor sponsors and mingle. He told them to think of it as a brief vacation, a sort of reprieve before the rush of work that was soon to follow.

Soul wondered if it would be anything but.

"You're curious about my family, right?"

They were in an empty lecture hall because Maka had claimed to be looking for notes. Maka did not reply immediately. "You don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to," she lied.

"It's not about me wanting to. I don't have a choice now. You're going to meet them yourself next week."

Maka looked at him carefully. Her eyes were large and round and she was sincere in her question (but her voice and tone were blunt): "You don't get along with your family?"

"I do with Wes and Uncle Monty. My parents and grandmother are…"

Maka stared at him.

Soul exhaled. "Alright, I'll start from the top. I was born in England six years after my mother quit being a Parisian runway model…"

 _Author's Note:_ I apologize for the lateness. This is a pivotal chapter. I'm very happy with how it turned out, though it's a bit short, I was very engaged with what was happening in the world.

When I was reading and watching _Soul Eater_ I got the feeling that what DWMA and the gang did was very different from whatever else was going in the world: particularly when Maka once said of Hero, "If he went to a normal school he'd be popular." Soul had replied, "What matters here is the soul." So I began to wonder if everyone else who has nothing to do with Shibusen or anything that magical or supernatural related would think of these guys as powerful freaks and in some ways threats—as do Anti-Shibusen factions, I surmise.

Thank you for your patience so far and for your supportive reviews.


	9. In Which They Are Mistaken for a Witch

_Chapter Nine: In Which They Are Mistaken for a Witch_

Maka was unconsciously rubbing her mother's ring on her index finger against the staff of the Death Scythe through the thick of her gloves. The sky on the way to Europe was a bit bleak and the scenery limited to the Atlantic Ocean and an occasional pod of whales. She could feel the soul wavelengths of marine creatures when she extended her abilities into the water, but only in moments of absolute boredom.

Soul wasn't much of a conversationalist either, brooding for the first hour into their intercontinental flight. He eventually spoke up that the movement with the ring was annoying. She replied some crass comment.

When Kim overheard that they would be flying over the ocean, she leant Maka her goggles. "They really help," she'd replied to her puzzled expression. Now, with the cold air biting her nose and cracking her lips and whistling by her cheeks like they were intent on slicing them open, she was grateful that her eyes were spared.

"Can we slow down for a minute, Soul?"

"Hah? Again? At this rate we'd get to America faster!"

Despite his complaining he did allow them to slow and drop their altitude for a bit. It was cold and exhausting to travel this way, but faster. In the horizon was a greyness that was their destination. Maka pulled off the goggles. "We're almost there." She could feel the vague pull of a thousand human souls.

She stood up and stretched. The spot of warmth where Maka had been sitting immediately disappeared. Despite himself he shivered. He geared up to drop another set of snarky words, but he felt something through Maka, an impossible reaction, and had he been in his human form his jaw would have shut with a snap.

"Hi there, sister!" a witch called out excitedly and flew down to match Maka's level and pace. "Pleasure meetin' you here! I didn't expect to find any other witches on this route!"

She was a small and young thing dressed warmly and in cloth that moved with the wind. Her hat curled over her face like a crow's beak and in the place of straw her broom made use of feathers. Her skin was sallow, her eyes a bright yellow, her hair presumably dark was tied up in a hidden bun. Her smile was bright and emanated youth.

Maka realized she'd been mistaken for a witch.

"Why didn't you just warp to wherever you're going? Or maybe you're not coming from the witches' realm?"

"That's right, I'm flying from America."

"America!" She grew starry eyed. "I always wanted to go there! This is my first time leaving home! I'm going to meet my sister. My warping spells suck, so I have to travel the old fashioned way."

"I-is that so?"

The witch flew in even closer. "But sister, you're a flying master! I've never seen anyone balance so well on their broom before!"

Soul could read Maka's pride. He rolled his eyes.

"I've been flying for a long time," Maka replied, her cheeks warming.

"And making use of the Trade Winds, huh?"

"N-naturally," Maka answered.

 _Stop stuttering, you idiot_ , Soul thought, unimpressed with her farce thus far.

"You gotta hand it to Shibusen. Their work for the past few years has really helped out witches. A lot of us are still irate and don't trust the Shinigami. But at the same time he's made it possible for silly witches like you and me to fly in the open without being hassled. Of course we still to need to show our license to whoever asks."

"License?"

"The permit that allows witches to fly over human cities," the witch explained and gave Maka a blank stare. "You didn't know that?"

"Err…"

"That's bad, sis'. You're okay for over the ocean, but you'd better keep to the country in your travels or fly really, really high, and this time of year that's the absolute worst."

 _Will you stop being so tense!_ Soul motioned through their Resonance.

 _You wanna switch roles?!_

"But sister…"

" _Hii!_ Yes?" Maka was nervous because she couldn't act. It seemed if she revealed herself to be a member of Shibusen she wouldn't be attacked—upon guessing that this acquaintance was a Shibusen sympathizer—but the only witches Maka had ever spoken to were the children under Kim's and Angela's care. There were two of them.

Her flying companion noticed her nervousness and said nothing on the topic. She instead asked, "Are you a humanist?"

"A…"

"…patron to the humans. You don't believe that they should be wiped out and that the power of magic should be distilled in other ways."

She looked to the right. "Yeah."

"I am too," she said with a grin. "But my sister doesn't think so. She's weird: she lives among humans and works with humans and acts like a humanist, but her theory is that they're supposed to die and witches are supposed to replace them."

 _What a dangerous role to play,_ Maka thought. "Who does she work with?"

"The Death-to-Death Group," she answered brightly.

 _That's one of the largest organized anti-Shibusen factions still active!_ Maka and Soul recollected.

"I know what you're thinking," the witch continued, "my sister is working against Shibusen that's fighting real hard to repair relations between humans and witches. But it's not really like that. She's just a researcher there. Working for them makes her look like she's not a humanist to other witches, though her role is a controversial—and contradictory—one. But that idiot of mine is family. What can I do?"

"And she's in…Europe?"

"In Portugal actually," she answered. "She said something about testing on a large scale."

 _That sounds dangerous._

 _We need to tell Shinigami._

 _Wait, we need more information_ —"What do you mean testing? I thought she didn't mean to hurt humans?"

"Hmm…that's not entirely true. If it's for the sake of figuring out how stuff works, she'll hurt people. Not witches though. But from what I understand what she's working on isn't supposed to hurt anybody—if it works that is. It didn't work before and she almost ended up getting hunted down by a Shibusen agent in New York City. It was a Spartoi member too! Good thing that the weapon was a novice otherwise my sis would really have been in trouble. You know the Spartoi right? Hm? Sister, are you okay?"

Her smile was cracked and false. At last she sat on the staff. "I'm fine," she said as stiffly.

"What about your family, sister?"

"Huh?"

"Do you have any?"

"No! That is…not really, no." Do witches have fathers? Or mothers? They can have siblings.

"Ah! You can see the shore of England from here!"

So they could. Maka lifted her head and the wind was colder and buffeted her face. She pulled up her scarf over her nose and mouth, but it alleviated her very little. "We'll soon part ways."

"Oh, are you slowing down, sis?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Okay! It was nice meetin' ya! Bye!" And she took off with such paramount strength that in the wake of her broom's discharge Maka and Soul were pitched to one side. Hadn't it been for the fishing village and the abandoned hut…well, no, it still hurt like hell.

"That damned witch!" Soul snarled in the rubble. "I'll cut her down _myself_ when I next see her!"

Maka, at his side, was spiral eyed and her head lolling.

Soul complained about going back in weapon form. He said everything hurt. It was more than aching. When Maka poked him he froze. So they took a pick-up truck, a tram, a bus, a train, and a random vehicle to reach the city. It was tiring and the sky lethargic the entire trip.

The business of London reminded her of Tokyo. People, people, people, people and signs and scaffolding and red bricks and monuments and cabs and accents. Roads were black and slick with rain and everything to the touch and look was cold and wet. People were all in black or brown. Parasols were equally chromatically demure. It was late afternoon, but all it felt like was a brightly lit night. Street lamps were on and smog coated the bridges. In a word the city was oppressive.

Soul and Maka were the only ones dressed in white.

"When do you intend on telling Kidd about what that witch said?" Soul asked of his partner when they settled down in a café.

Maka was pulling of her gloves. "As soon as possible. But we should let your family know that we've arrived first. That's what we came here for."

To himself he muttered, "There's no rush to meet 'em."

Maka made to move to indicate she heard him. She held the paper cup of coffee gratefully in her hands and smelled in the bitter and sweet and heat of the coffee. Soul had already downed his.

"She was interesting though, huh? It would be nice to have more witches like that at Shibusen."

"I'm pretty sure the only reason she seemed so nice was because she thought you were a witch. She'd probably have reacted differently if she knew that you were the one who almost hunted her sister in New York."

Maka laughed sardonically. She rested her chin in her palm and her eyes rolled towards the door of the café. "Mm. She'd probably have…" Maka suddenly pressed her body weight into the seat. Her posture was that of a creature under threat, an animal that was caught in the headlights.

Soul followed her gaze. A giant Punu mask glowered at and over them. Soul and Maka reclined in their seats as the mask—and the figure wearing it—loomed closer.

"Maka, is that thing human?" Soul whispered.

"Um…"

"Soul?" the mask asked.

Against all odds, recognition flashed over Soul's countenance. Maka bore witness to the frown that set in his brow and how his back straightened then, in an incredulous tone, Soul bellowed: _"Uncle Monty?"_

"Soul my boy!"

And the African mask was replaced with the more naturalistic figure of an aged fellow with a porky disposition and silver hair, a suit that was off white and a pair of shoes that seemed to have just walked out of the cobblers the way they looked so spanking new.

Of Uncle Monty's face little could be said beyond the square jaw, slant eyes and lazy grin that reminded of her partner. Everything else was foreign to her—save for maybe his wavelength that was, in some intermittent beats, not unlike Soul's.

Said weapon got to his feet to greet his mother's brother. Their embrace was hearty and full of back-clapping.

"What are you doing here? I was told you were out of the country until the end of this week!"

"But you're _mad_ , my son! How could I have remained in Gabon when my beloved nephew whom I haven't seen hide or hair of in the _past six years_ is coming home!" He braced Soul by his shoulders. "What a way you're maturing! If you crop that iconic hairstyle of yours it'll be a true trial to tell you apart from your brother!"

"Where is Wes?" Soul looked over Montgomery's shoulder with more eagerness than he'd expressed within the past twelve hours.

"He's at the manor, I assume," Uncle Monty replied. "Last I heard he was helping your mother prepare for your and your partner's arrival. Speaking of which, is this her?"

Maka had gotten to her feet slowly and politely. When Montgomery Benson noticed her, she outstretched her hand first. "Pleasure."

"Pleasure's all mine, Ms. Albarn!" he took her hand in his. "Quite the grip you've got there!"

"Uncle Monty's a composer by profession," Soul introduced.

Montgomery added: "But an anthropologist at heart! The bowels of my manor are bursting at the seams with my very private very international collection. Allow Ivan and myself to get you there!"

Upon leaving the café Maka leaned over to Soul and asked, "Your uncle owns a manor?"

"Each of the Benson children does."

Something slowly dropped into place in Maka's head. "Soul, are you rich by any chance?"

"Course not," Soul answered casually and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "But my family…they don't need to worry about where their next meal comes from."

 _Clearly_ , Maka thought when she realized that Ivan was the chauffer.

 _Author's Note:_ I rewrote this chapter because I felt that I had lost sight of what I was aiming for. Appreciation to reviewers who are still with me is expressed. Reviews are still welcome.


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